Bangalore

India is to mount a determined effort to attract its scientists home from abroad and to strip its scientific agencies of excessive bureaucracy, under a science policy document released last week.

The Science and Technology Policy 2003 — which has taken years to produce — was unveiled on 3 January by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Indian Science Congress in Bangalore. He appealed to India's “scientific diaspora” to return to the country to help him realize his “vision of making India a developed nation”.

“We have to ensure that our scientific institutions do not become afflicted with the culture of our government agencies,” Vajpayee said. “Seniority should not displace merit; talent should not be suppressed.”

Vajpayee also pledged that the government would make the required budgetary commitment to increase Indian spending on research and development — by government and industry — to at least 2% of the gross domestic product by 2007. Valangiman Ramamurthi, the science and technology secretary, claims that this will not be difficult, as spending has already risen from 0.8% in 2000 to 1.08% in 2002.

Ramamurthi adds that “the mechanisms will be in place very soon” to attract home scientists who have left India. He says that the new policy will be rapidly implemented and will give universities and research institutions greater autonomy.

Government officials say that under the policy, science-based ministries will be run by scientists and engineers, and other ministries will appoint scientific advisory committees. They also say that selected universities and scientific institutions will get money to strengthen their infrastructure. But details of the funding will be left to a task force being set up to find ways of encouraging private and public investment in research.

Scientists at the conference were encouraged by the promises of greater autonomy and scientific input in decision-making, but were sceptical about pledges on government reform. “If the prime minister thinks de-bureaucratization is needed only in science departments, he is wrong,” says J. Gowrishankar, a molecular biologist at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad. “It is needed in the finance ministry, which audits the scientific institutes.”